Alan Stern Quotes

Pluto is as far across as Manhattan to Miami, but its atmosphere is bigger than the Earth's.

Pluto has a very interesting history, and there is a lot of work that we need to do to understand this very complicated place.

It's interesting - Pluto's almost a brand unto itself. It's the farthest. It's the most diminutive of the classical planets. It's been maligned by astronomers. It's always the one with all the question marks in the back of the textbook in the table. I think children identify with it because it's smaller, kind of cute.

I call Pluto the harbinger.

As a planetary scientist, I don't know what else to call Pluto: It's big and round and thousands of miles wide.

I think when people see Pluto revealed by New Horizons, its satellite system, its complex surface, its atmosphere, I think they'll have a hard time saying 'That's not a planet' because it obviously will be, and I think most people are already coming to that opinion anyway, but I think that's really going to drive it home viscerally.

I actually started my career in planetary science with a master's thesis on Pluto.

There is a planet named Pluto, but we don't have one named Goofy. Goofy would be a good name for this planet. It certainly qualifies.

The earth together with its surrounding waters must in fact have such a shape as its shadow reveals, for it eclipses the moon with the arc of a perfect circle.

I conclude, therefore, that this star is not some kind of comet or a fiery meteor... but that it is a star shining in the firmament itself one that has never previously been seen before our time, in any age since the beginning of the world.

Earth took her shining station as a star, In Heaven's dark hall, high up the crowd of worlds.

A borrowed light, circular in form, it revolves about the earth, as if following the track of a chariot.

I am not sufficiently conceited to think that my sun is the only one with a family of planets and, therefore, that our little earth is unique. Once we admit that the other stars probably also have planets, at any rate a goodly proportion of them, it is more than likely that a large fraction of these will be the right size to keep on their surface water and, possibly, an atmosphere of some sort; and, furthermore, at the proper distance from their parent sun, to maintain a suitable temperature.

The light from the sun breaks through space, bathing our planet as it encircles the sun with life-giving warmth and light. Without the sun, there could be no life on this planet; it would be forever barren, cold, and dark.

I'm the one who originally coined the term 'dwarf planet,' back in the nineteen-nineties.

Liquids may have existed on the surface of Pluto in the past.

I think Pluto has to be considered among the places in the solar system that are possible homes for life.

Back before the Kuiper Belt was discovered, Pluto did look like a misfit that didn't belong with either the terrestrials or the giant planets.

If you go to planetary science meetings and hear technical talks on Pluto, you will hear experts calling it a planet every day.

We're pretty sure there's plenty of organic material on Pluto. The atmosphere is largely methane, and in sunlight, methane builds organic molecules. We see reddish stuff on the surface that we think is organic material.

Whether there's even an ocean on Pluto deep inside is a question I hope New Horizons can address in indirect ways.

Pluto is the new Mars.

There was a time when Pluto - which NASA's New Horizons spacecraft at last explored in 2015, a mission I led - was considered the last planet. We now know there are thousands of other - possibly inhabited - planets.

Of course Pluto is a planet: It's massive enough to have its shape controlled by gravity rather than material strength, which is the hallmark of planethood.

Pluto is showing us a diversity of landforms and complexity of processes that rival anything we've seen in the solar system.